The End of Cygni, The Beginning of Young Sega Energy | Patreon Podcast
Added 2024-08-21 20:27:18 +0000 UTCHello Patrons! On today's episode of the Patreon Podcast I talk about my experience with getting stonewalled while trying to give feedback during the early days of Cygni's Development (and how LAME NDA's are) and then I also talk about my new idea of Young Sega Energy, where I feel the retro gaming scene has become kinda stale as of late and it's time to try to approach classic gaming with a fresh perspective and energy that I hope connects with the classic gaming audience in a fun way. I'm also excited to go to Portland Retro Gaming expo as field research and to scope out the panels, as I'd love to do in person panels myself in the future.
Also again, thank you so much for supporting the channel! You all are what allows me to work on my content with the level of dedication that I feel is required :-)
Sincerely,
Mark
Comments
I connected with many things you said, but I’ll comment on what you said at the end about difficulty in games. Since discovering your content I pretty much only focus on games with dense gameplay and it feels great! As of becoming a parent recently I only have a couple of minutes here and there to play games and density is really important. I fire up radiant silvergun and work on my chaining, or make one run (if that). Wouldn’t get much done in a less dense game. Ps. Looking forward to seeing a dashing long haired mark
ahlnold
2024-09-24 20:32:15 +0000 UTCMy personal take is you should get a Boy Meets World analogy in every podcast >:D get guest star Nunzio. Cygni is interesting, though. Given the perception of the shmup genre its kind of a smart marketing ploy to say you'll flip the genre on its head. But, as you said, this isn't anything new. Cuphead, while I think is a shitty version of shmups and run n guns, had wild success. Rabi-Ribi a popular metroidvania with influence from Touhou also met great success. You find shmup influence in tons of indie games, especially when it comes to projectile patterns. It's actually pretty crazy how much skill from 1CCing shmups has carried over to other game genres for me. You brought up difficult catching on, and I agree. But I think the style that's catching on is not scoreplay, limited credits, and no miss like you see in shmups. People like their challenge bitesized with lots of stops and checkpoints that make it so you don't need a robust understanding of a game; you can still brute force, especially with RPG elements and roguelite. But it still is enough to give you that satisfaction that you crossed that current hurdle. My point of that is, I think the difficulty style is not easily compatible with the difficulty mainstream like. I think that's a big hurdle to make a "faithful" shmup that appeals to all in that regard. Kind of rambling there while waiting in the car for my girlfriends hair appointment. But fun podcast, hope things go well with the channel 8)
Ushi Mushi
2024-09-19 03:31:38 +0000 UTCSame, but we’re in an anti-bubble. It’s like the only people who are actually watching The View are in hospital beds, and yet they set the tone for the daily discussion for YT, podcasts, etc. Metacritic is also an internal KPI for publishers which in turn makes the media relationship with marketing an absolute mess. Complete wag the dog industry.
Spiders_STG
2024-09-08 18:10:10 +0000 UTCMark is going “All Guns Blazing” lol
Spiders_STG
2024-09-08 17:46:20 +0000 UTCI'm glad you're making the jump to full time and pivoting to a new challenge. Life's too short to always worry about making the "correct" or traditionally responsible choice at all times, that's what limits you and leads to a life with regret. I'm happy to support and glad you're coming out to PRGE! Looking forward to showing off the area and hanging out!
Viewtifu1
2024-08-30 21:16:18 +0000 UTCMark, I think you're leading the way for the next big thing in live gaming with Shmup Slam! Speed running is cool and all, but live challenge runs and score runs are much more engaging IMO. I really like watching esports too, because you get all the drama of head-to-head competition, and brackets, and underdogs, and all that stuff. Maybe the next step to increase the drama is more versus challenge runs and versus score play. And hell, bring a little more team play back into it, like 2P versus runs, I think 2P versus beat 'em ups for high score could be cool. Maybe team versus play is a bit kooky though since netplay practice is a challenge.
Arcade Hell
2024-08-26 14:17:05 +0000 UTCHa yeah I really enjoy playing with words, it's a passion of mine :-) There will sometimes be little bits of wordplay in vids and podcasts that I'm super proud of, but try not to be too "look at me!" with the presentation. So if you keep an eye out you can see little word games scattered throughout my vids ha.
The Electric Underground
2024-08-26 07:01:53 +0000 UTCI definitely can, it's such a huge relief. It has really opened up my bandwith so much more not only on the channel, but as a person overall.
The Electric Underground
2024-08-26 07:00:04 +0000 UTCYes exactly Desolis. I think what needs to start happening is that a lot of the ideas of speedrunning (routing, playing optimally) need to start to be incorporated back into the formal game design by having official performance metric systems and formal time attack modes and so forth. Expecting the internet to create an external meta around a game isn't reliable or sustainable and that type of external meta can't get momentum with smaller releases anyway. So the more the devs can build these systems into the games directly, the better I think.
The Electric Underground
2024-08-26 06:59:21 +0000 UTCYeah I do think the casuals still use metacritic, even subconsciously ha. Like if you google Cygni right now, google will pull up the metacritic score automatically. So basically the way it works now is that no one really goes to the metacritic site anymore (or rarely). But metacritic scores get seen constantly just floating around in algs and search engines. And once you see the score I do think it subconsciously frames your view of the game. I don't think it makes a huge factor for more hardcore players such as ourselves, but I think it does make a big difference to the casual impulse buyer for sure, which is the main market western devs seem to target these days ha.
The Electric Underground
2024-08-26 06:56:51 +0000 UTCYes and pretty soon I have to talk about spikeout! A really overlooked sega classic in the west. It finally got a port in a pretty crazy way, being included in the most recent yakuza game ha. i'm watching for a sale.
The Electric Underground
2024-08-26 06:53:43 +0000 UTCAbsolutely! Yes I do plan to revist and do vids for all the NG games actually, especially NG2. So yes! I have a lot more to say about the game and have def grown in my video making skills since then ha.
The Electric Underground
2024-08-26 06:52:39 +0000 UTCI like how you make word associations. "Glycemic gas" was funnier than it had any right to be.
Spaghedward1
2024-08-23 17:31:30 +0000 UTCYo mark, hope you can feel those winds of freedom blowing through your hair now you've left the corporate grind! Great podcast as per usual.
RiffMason
2024-08-23 09:09:16 +0000 UTCagreed i don’t really see people care much about establishment reviews
Florida sucks
2024-08-23 06:29:01 +0000 UTCIt's heartening to hear that your escape from the corporate grind is starting to bear its fruit already. I spent many years trapped in a similar cycle, and the soul crushing, stifling changes it can bring about are sometimes slow and hard to recognize. Boiling the frog indeed... Looking forward to seeing what your freedom continues to bring to your craft. Having come to shmups and then this community from speedrunning initially...Yes! What you're saying about speedrunning is something I've mulled over also. I agree a shift needs to happen generally, and we must go deeper. There is certainly a novelty to understanding a game well enough to expose and abuse its bugs and flaws, but after that novelty wears off what exactly are you gunning for? Where's the general challenge and depth of play in exploiting those bugs? Engaging with the systems the game puts forth with an honest study of the era and the developers work and intentions feels far more interesting. Speed is fine, but why does it have to be speed without substance? Of course it's not a unanimous mold among all possible games a person could run, but I think I've mostly preferred 100% and glitchless runs for this reason. You're actually engaging with the content and context more.
Desolis
2024-08-23 05:39:15 +0000 UTCDo most people really care about metacritic anymore?As far as reviews go, the most place with the most leverage areprobably the steam reviews which are currently mixed. Konami is probably not pleased about that
Tony Rigerto
2024-08-21 23:33:43 +0000 UTCHuge SEGA fanatic here! LFG!!! That two of your last videos were Vanquish and Virtua Fighter was not lost on me ha
Bazzlemedazzle
2024-08-21 23:16:35 +0000 UTCi definitely get that sleep deprived vibe from your old videos man lmao. in fact i just recently revisited your NG2 review. it's a nice little video, but would you ever consider doing an entirely new review with your new, more polished and scripted style? that would be a hell of a video.
Florida sucks
2024-08-21 22:37:28 +0000 UTC
